Are you planting grass or what? If you are not planting grass, then cover it with several inches of mulch. If you are planting grass, you should probably mulch now and seed in the fall. You can usually get free mulch from a tree trimmer with a chipper.

I didn't know Scott's sold manure.

Are you planning on planting this year? What are you planning on planting? Also, what is the clay content? I have included a link below for a good way to determine exactly what your soil is made of.

If you are planning on planting this year, there are a number of solutions, but it really depends on some of the questions above.

However, if you are not planting until next year, you really have a good opportunity to improve your situation: cover crop. Grow a nice bed of buckwheat, vetch, or rye grass, and just before the crop is to flower, get out the weed-whacker and cut it down. You can then till in the remains into the surface with a hoe, and plant another crop. Personally, my rotation on unused beds goes as follows (assuming a spring planting):

hairy vetch (either spring seeded or overwintered)
buckwheat (sometimes two crops if vetch is skipped)
hairy vetch (to overwinter)

Another nice crop to grow is bush peas. The seed can be expensive, but nothing leaves the soil in nicer shape than peas. Innoculate the seeds, then cut them down just after flowering. It is always tough to cut down peas before you get to eat any, but if you do, you are trapping the nitrogen in the root nodules that would normally be used up during mature growth.

Best of luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Composition Test

What your soil needs is ample quantities of organic matter and one of the best comes annually from the deciduous trees that are plentiful in New Jersey. Those leaves can be composted, shredded to make mulch, and worked (tilled) into the soil. What you need in that clay soil is between 5 and 8 percent organic matter. The Soil Compostion Test suggested by M Lorne is good and is one that I have been suggesting for years, and the only thing I would change is to use 4 inches of soil in that jar since that does make the math much easier. Put 4 inches of soil in the jar, fill it with water, let things settle (24 hours is enough time) and then divide the level of each constituent part by 4 to get the approximate percent of each. So 1/4 inch of humus (that would be the top layer) divided by 4 would be 0.0625 or about 6 percent humus.

That sounds like a fun / interesting test. But, what do you do with the information you gain from it? In other words, what target values or what's important?

The cover crop sound like a good idea, imo. Let the plants do the work. At least for the areas you don't need until next spring.

any suggestions on what i should do to amend the clay in the mean time, also cheaply since i dont want to spend an arm and a leg.

Now, I may be confused by the structure of the comment, but I can't tell what you're doing. So we could tell you anything.

Nonetheless, you need a rototiller, and not a little 2hp thing, but a real 11hp brute to go down 8-10 inches and really work in some organic matter.

What else do you need to till in? Who knows until you decide what to plant there.

Dan

Disregard my previous post....found it in another thread. :-)

ok, i will try the soil test this weekend.

the scotts bag says humus/manure.
not planting grass, wanted to plant perennials this season. Most likely wont plant veges this season.

when i mixed in the scotts h/m the soil was 2 days dry from a rain, many pieces were clumps and when pulverized would shatter to dust. it took a lot of effort to dig down just 2 or 3 inches.

A co-worker said i should use peet moss when planting perennials, either rake it through or add it to the hole when planting. How exactly does the peet moss benefit the soil/planting?

As you can see i am very new to gardening, thanks for all your advise.

Do you have access to anything else beside that peat moss? If there is readily available some leaf mold, perhaps from the leaf dump nearby or a nursery or a landscape service that picks up leaves from many yards, that would be better then peat moss even if the cost is roughly the same.
Peat moss has no nutrients which means you need to buy something else to provide the nutrients your plants need, and while this is considered an advantage by some the soil bacteria will not munch on peat moss unless there is nothing else to munch on. Peat moss does not feed the Soil Food Web, and peat moss is a non renewable resource.

I read somewhere that one way to get rid of wild onions would be to dig the dirt up and pass it through a screen, then you can toss the bulbs that get screened out. I'm thinking this would be best done when the soil is dry and crumbly.

As for improving the soil tilling is one option but be aware that it can bring weed seeds to the surface and next thing you know you have a weed plantation.

Clay is usually quite fertile, and if you have or can attract earthworms they will do a great job of breaking up the soil. In your place I would just put a layer of wet cardboard or wet newspapers as a weed barrier, then put organic matter or mulch over that. Then start planting, pushing holes through the cardboard/newspaper. I like to put a bit of one of the Espoma Tone fertilizers in each planting hole since they are slow release and also have good bacteria in them.

As for plants, I have clay soil, and all sorts of plants love it.
Perennials: In the sun I have purple coneflowers and black-eyed susans, sedum, lamb's ears, bachelor buttons, lily-turf; in the shade there's hollyhocks and astilbes. There's really a lot of choices, it would help if you knew if your soil happens to be acidic or basic. In any case, for now avoid plants that say "requires excellent drainage" or words to that effect.

I love my peonies (but wait til fall to plant these -- they are tubers but shallow planted ). You can plant bulbs in the fall too but don't plant them one by one in clay or your arm will fall off. Reserves a part of the bed for them (maybe plant annuals in it now) and in late fall dig a wide hole and toss the bulbs in at the right depths (pointed in the right way LOL). The lowest planted ones first, then cover with dirt, followed by the shallower pointed ones, etc). It will be really nice next spring.

Shrubs - red-twig dogwood? In NJ I'm guessing also azaleas & hydrangeas (see if they grow in your neighborhood). Roses are supposed to thrive in clay but this is the first year I am trying a couple after researching hardy disease resistant kinds.

Don't make my mistake and not have any evergreen plants with your perennials, btw -- looks desolate in winter.

Speaking of not spending an arm or a leg, did you know that lowes will put torn bags of mulch and amendments in clear "product recovery bags" and sell them for 50% off? I didn't know this until last week -- now I keep checking for new goody bags. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: one of the

Virgin clay soil takes a lot of effort to turn into a good growing medium. We've recently made some new perennial beds in such soil and DH always goes over it once with the tiller then layers on whatever amendment we have (this time it was sawdust/sheep manure) and tills it in. He tills fairly slowly so it digs down and we end up with about 9" of "soil". This is still not really good soil but I'll be adding alfalfa tea and compost as soon as it's done. I've only planted really hardy perennials there for now. It's not a bed for roses.

When I first started gardening here I also grew a mixed cover crop which is a good way to add organic material.

Clay soil requires constant addition of OM.

Just curious, what color is your clay, luckygal?
The stuff we have here is almost red, beneath the topsoil.

Ajpa, our clay is grey-beige and sometimes in the forest there's not much topsoil under the coniferous trees.

When I moved here, the red clay soil took alot of getting used to. It does have it's advantages, like lots of nutrients, and holds moisture. You got some good advice about avoiding plants that need excellent drainage. You might want to do some internet searching about no-till gardening, and reasons not to till. There seems to be 2 schools of thought on this, but why till if you don't have to, is my line of thinking. I've been here 3 yrs now, and things are really started to look good. The best advice I got was to only plant when the soil can be worked well. That is a few days after a rain, usually. The soil will be like "moist chocolate cake" (from Felder Rushing, a southern gardening expert) and not dry like a brick, nor mushy like you are going to work it on a potter's wheel. When I first came here, and didn't know better, I'd try to plant when it was dry and I literally needed a pickaxe. What I have done successfully was to mulch, mulch, mulch with organic matter (compost, shredded bark, shredded leaves) and I compost just about everything, and add that when I can. Other advice that I think also helps is to dig a very wide hole, about 3x as wide as the plant ball, but only as deep as the plant ball, and then backfill with the native soil, adding maybe some compost or bagged compost/humus if that's what you can get.
Good luck, I have come to know and accept my clay soil, but it was a very big adjustment for me.
laurie